Thursday, January 3. 2008

Whilst in Melbourne, a trip to Luna Park[RCDB] was inevitable for me. This is the park that introduced me to the buzz of amusement rides in 1986, by way of the Gravitron (which was unfortunately removed from the park in 2004). Naturally I was horrendously ill after the ride, and vowed (rather unconvincingly) never to do that ever again!

Today I took my nieces, Neve and Millie, to visit this tiny but amazingly historic little park.

There are in fact two Luna Parks in Australia, with one in Melbourne, and the other being Luna Park Sydney. Sydney copied Melbourne and opened their park in 1935, and while both parks have a dark history of financial problems, fires and deaths, Sydney's park has the worst history and includes several closures and devastating acts of vandalism.

In 1995 Sydney's park reopened after receiving heritage listing and a grant from the government, mostly as a political play due to the up-coming Sydney Olympics. It was even seen briefly in a Farscape episode. Sadly because of all of this, and since Melbourne's park has only recently been heritage listed, this continues to cause great confusion with tourists.

The name “Luna Park” comes from the original Coney Island park with the same name. Melbourne's park was originally built by two yanks as a copy of the original, even bringing in key engineers for construction of its “fence”, however the park soon took on a unique feel of its own that separated it from its North-American origins. Luna Park was built on a site called “Dreamland”, originally used for travelling amusements dating back to as early as 1906.

Luna Park may seem a little odd or even pathetic to outsiders. It's very tiny compared to other parks around the world, but this can be attributed to its history. The park opened in 1912 with its famous MoorishMr. Moon entrance (the giant laughing mouth) and the equally famous Scenic Railway roller-coaster surrounding the park, doubling as its fence. The concept was to have rides on the outside of the park, while the inside contained live performance, and everything was just for fun.

The Scenic Railway is the world's oldest, continuously operating roller-coaster. Despite what you would expect, this ride did actually continue to operate during the world wars, albeit under black-out conditions and while the rest of the park was closed. The views from the ride of Port Phillip Bay are absolutely stunning, and few other rides are tall enough to loom over this “fence”!

The Scenic Railway is also a perfect example of a side-friction coaster, in that it doesn't have wheels both over and under the track as you would see in modern wooden-coasters (this was invented in the 1920s). Because of this, large wooden coasters built in this manner can derail easily if they take a corner too fast, and as a result they have a brake-man which rides the coaster and helps it stay on-track, literally.

It goes without saying, the Scenic Railway has derailed in the past…

Disappointingly for me, it's closed for maintenance this season; undergoing extensive foundation repairs due to the drought, structural work on the lift-hill, and track alignment. It should be open next season, but that doesn't help me since I'm leaving in eleven days!

At Neve's whim, our first stop was the G-Force, which is sort of a flattened version of the ubiquitous Matterhorn design you see everywhere (“Alpine Express”, “Jetbob”, etc.). It's a fairly simplistic ride that spins around, with the swinging gondolas being forced outwards so you ride perpendicular to the central axis. Eventually the ride tilts slightly to add to the thrill.

With no signs of vomiting, Neve decided to tackle the Pharoah's Curse. Luna Park has a long history of having an Egyptian area towards the rear of the park, so this ride has been renamed to fit the area. It's actually a FabbriKamikaze 1, which is commonly seen travelling in Australia. Neve faired pretty well, despite a little bit of swearing and general melodrama. She left the ride feeling giddy and boisterous from the adrenalin overload!

At this point, Millie didn't want to go on these rides, so she played at the nearby sideshows. Millie and Neve decided the next ride should be the Twin Dragon — a classic non-inverting Pirate Ship — where Neve would present more melodrama than she did on the Pharoah's Curse, and Millie kept her eyes shut the entire time.

We (mistakenly) went for an expensive yuppie lunch on Acland Street to try and avoid poor food at the park. Price wise, this wasn't the best idea, since any street that's yuppified enough to have its own website is bound to be pricey.

Returning to the park, we all ventured on the Ghost Train. This ride is a little creepy for adults because of its history (although not as creepy as Sydney's Ghost Train), but generally it's a lot of fun. It was originally opened in 1934 as The Pretzel — a little wobbly train ride. The track was restructured in 1936, and the ride theme was reworked to be The Ghost Ride in 1937. While the interiors have been redecorated several times, the track layout has not changed since 1936!

The trains are original, and to operate they need to be pushed from the station through the entry doors where the track is electrified. Something has to be said for the durability of these Pretzel rides, as this thing is still going strong.

As expected, the Ghost Train was a lot of fun, with Millie finding the decapitation section hilarious!

The Scenic Railway wasn't the only thing closed, as the Spider and the Shock Drop were also closed, requiring repairs. The Shock Drop in particular looked somewhat pathetic compared to what I'm used to, since it's a thrilling drop of only a few metres (it's a MoserSpring Ride 10). I guess there's a few people I know who are terrified of Walibi's Dalton Terror who would actually go on this ride!

The Carousel features hand-carved horses which have been maintained in their original hand-painted finish. During the late-1980s, the poor ride was left to deteriorate. Since then, the Carousel has undergone an amazing restoration process and is now heritage listed like the rest of the park.

Any photos I could take wouldn't do it justice.

While Millie was there, Neve and I went over to ride Metropolis, a “mad-mouse” style ride (S.D.C.Galaxi) which was built in the late-1960s/early-1970s but was probably only installed in the park later as it's a travelling model. It's currently in bad shape, as most of the hydraulics are no longer functioning. Only two trains are operating, one at a time, with only one other absent (leaving a few unaccounted for). Trains entering the station are even being manually stopped by a non-riding brake-man!

I was told that the trains were coupled a while ago (into a train of two carriages rather than single carriages as you would expect) because of the faults in order to keep the rider through-put high. Considering the whole rusty steel structure is bending and twisting and clicking, it's amazing the ride is still functional. After a couple of rides, it's pretty clear to me that the ride is certainly safe, but I doubt you'd see anything in this condition in Western Europe!

As with all rides of this ilk, it's a hell of a lot of fun and almost made up for the fact that the Scenic Railway was closed!

The girls headed over to the so-called Street Legal Dodgem Cars, which reside on the ground floor next to the arcade. The original dodgem cars at Luna Park were in fact above its present location, however the first floor has since been converted into a function room. Naturally, I did not try the dodgems.

Neve caught the roller-coaster bug and decided to ride the Silly Serpent, a ZamperlaDragon kiddie-coaster. I guess the benefit of kiddie-coasters is that they give you a few rides around the track before they stop the ride, so it's fairly good value for kids.

The break gave me time to contemplate a great mystery: Why is the Enterprise such an ubiquitous element of amusement parks? It seems that every park of a reasonable size has one, but oddly it's never really utilised. They never seem to have long queues, if at all, and quite often they sit idle during the day. Can anyone explain this to me?

Luna Park has a live-action attraction at the moment, the Tomb Raider Anniversary Live labyrinth. It's a dark labyrinth with lots of actors running around in the dark trying to scare people, and it's even being advertised on television. Any excuse to have a haunted house attraction in the middle of January, right?

I wasn't too convinced the girls were old enough to wander through the labyrinth, and I explained to them that it was designed to be really scary. The girls managed to convince me otherwise, and we headed into the labyrinth. As it turns out, Uncle Simon was correct and the girls were a little shaken after their wander through Anubis' Tomb of Terror.

Curiously, we entered the labyrinth as a group of six, with three others from the queue joining us, however one by one they were picked off and pushed out emergency exits by the actors. We met up with them after the attraction where they were completely confused as to what happened! Sounds like an interesting idea to freak some people out…

The park is small and airy, but unfortunately gets a little too much sun. As you can see, much of the park is concreted and there's very little shade. Obviously there's not much room for trees, but the park becomes very hot.

To compensate for this, a donated W-class tram has been converted into a quiet and air-conditioned area, but obviously isn't enough for a park full of people. It seems that most people ignored it today, though, except if they had brought their own lunch.

It was a great day out and the girls certainly enjoyed themselves; I hope to head back after 2012 for Luna Park's 100th anniversary! By then, much of the park will have been repaired and restored to its original glory, which will be very interesting to see.

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.